Neil Young’s A Letter Home – stream it now

When Neil Young pulled up to the Nashville home of Third Man Records sometime last year, he couldn’t have guessed the experience would change his life.

As Young and his crew set up to film a promo videowith Third Man proprietor Jack White, an oblivious fan entered the facility’s Voice-o-Graph recording booth to lay down a cover of one of Young’s tunes. “When he opened the door Neil poked his head out,” White recalled recently. “That was a beautiful moment. I think that inspired him.”

A few months later, White received a phone call from Young. “He said, ‘Hey, I want to come record in that booth and hey, maybe I’ll do my whole next record there.'”

“I’m not going to stop you.” White replied. “Where do you want me to pick you up?”

Nearly a year to the day of that moment of inspiration, Young is releasing A Letter Home, his thirty fifth album and first recorded in White’s refurbished 1947 vinyl recording booth (the only working Voice-o-Graph in the world).

Consisting of 11 covers by Young, with the occasional volley from White, the album features stripped down versions of classics by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and fellow Canadian icon Gordon Lightfoot (not to mention a monologue aimed at his late mother in which he asks her to talk to his father and send his regards to late bandmate Ben Keith).

As Young himself described it, “an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever.”

A Letter Home is released May 27 but you can listen to the album a week early below: